Tomato Quintet was a project I worked on with Greg
Niemeyer and Chris
Chafe. The project focused on the tomato’s ability as
a climacteric fruit to emit carbon dioxide during its ripening process.
Depending on environmental conditions, this process can take anywhere between 3
and 7 days. With CO2, light, and temperature sensors, the change in environment
for each tomato pod was monitored and turned into music. I provided visuals that
were built in Processing that accompanied the sonification.

Five pods were set up at the Machine Project
gallery for ten days in August 2007. The data was simultaneously recorded and
sonified real-time. At the end of the ripening process the tomatoes were made
into pasta sauce and served to guests while accompanied by a 45 minute
compressed version of the ripening process. Live
musicians improvised along by interpreting visualizations produced by the tomato
music.